Recovering Out Loud

Another  Borrowed Wisdom  episode — I read the highlight clips from a Bob talk that shifted something in me, and reflect on them one at a time. This one lands hard on the stuff nobody tells you when you first put the drink down: that the real problem starts where the bottle ends. Bob talks about being restless, irritable and discontent as a little kid, long before he ever picked up. The "dise...

Everyone in recovery preaches gratitude. Almost nobody tells you it can feel completely fake when you're hurting. In this solo episode I get into what gratitude actually is in recovery — the difference between the performative "#blessed" version and the real thing — why it's so hard early on and after a relapse, and how I practice it without lying to myself. I talk about grateful...

Getting sober doesn't automatically make you a good person. Remove the alcohol or the drugs and you're left with the same wiring — the self-centeredness, the main-character syndrome, the 100 forms of self-centered fear that ran the show all along. The problem starts where the bottle ends. In this solo episode, Anthony talks honestly about the selfishness that outlasts the substance: the sn...

She had 11 months sober — then relapsed over an argument she'd only ever had in her own head. Jen returns to the show to walk through what came next: eight months of counting drinks, sneaking drinks, and trying to "manage it" — a stretch she says felt crazier than when she was strung out. From there it's the recovery that finally stuck: getting sober for good, becoming a sober mo...

This is Part 2 of Borrowed Wisdom: Earl, "The Path to Freedom." Earl is one of my all-time favourites in recovery. I pulled the quotes that hit hardest and reflected on each one from my own experience — a guy who relapsed after 7.5 years sober and had to find his way back. What we get into: - The mask we wear — in addiction, in sobriety, and how the tough guy performance set up my relaps...

Some recovery stories are told from one side. This one isn't. Chloe lived the alcoholism. Andrew loved her through it — and watched both the addiction and the recovery up close. In this episode they sit down together and rebuild the same years from two different chairs: how they fell for each other fast, how the drinking took over, the hospital trips, the relapses, and the night it finally tur...

Nobody warns you that sobriety can stop feeling like a win. They warn you about the cravings, the first 30 days, the holidays. Nobody tells you about the Tuesday — a couple of years in — when the chips slow down, the applause stops, and being sober just becomes your life. And somewhere in that quiet, the old voice gets an opening. I know it because I lived it. I relapsed after seven and a half yea...

This is the first in a new series — Borrowed Wisdom — where I share the greatest recovery speaker tapes that saved my life. Every resentment I've ever had came from fear, and a speaker named Bob D broke that wide open for me. In this solo episode I pull the highlights from a speaker tape that's saved my ass more times than I can count, and I reflect on what each line means in my own recovery. We g...

I said "I'm sorry" so many times in my addiction that the word stopped meaning anything. All words, no action — guilt with a better vocabulary. In this solo episode I get into the difference between a verbal amends and a  living  amends: not the conversation, but the daily commitment to behave differently and become someone who doesn't repeat the harm. I talk about cleaning up my...

10 unfiltered thoughts from my morning journal on staying sober, comparison, peace over happiness, and the war that's really with myself. At a year and a half sober again, I sat down with my morning journal and pulled out 10 thoughts that are keeping me in recovery right now — then talked them through, raw and unscripted. This one's about comparison and jealousy in the recovery and creator space (...

Is it okay to admit you miss drinking? Psychotherapist Eryl returns to  Recovering Out Loud  for an honest conversation about the grief almost nobody talks about in early sobriety — and why pretending "it was all bad" can leave you feeling more ashamed and isolated than the truth ever would. Anthony and Eryl get into the alcohol addiction recovery experience as it really is: substances as an "esca...

Everyone talks about what you lose when you get sober. Nobody talks about what you get back. Not the big stuff — career, family, health. Those are real, but they're slow. They're not what keeps you sober at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday. In this episode, Anthony breaks down the unexpected, small, sometimes weird gifts that sobriety actually delivers — the ones that sneak up on you, that nobody puts...

You're allowed to miss it. Nobody tells you that. Most recovery content tells you your using days were all bad. But if that were true, you wouldn't have kept going back. In this episode, Anthony gets honest about the parts of his drinking and using days he actually misses — the escape, the ritual, the identity, the connection — and why admitting that out loud might be the most important th...

Everyone says weed isn't addictive. Alex is eight years sober and almost didn't make it out. This is the first time he's told the whole thing start to finish. We get into the last 30 days of his using — when he was so deep he couldn't even get high anymore, just chasing a feeling that was already gone. He takes us to his last day: an ice storm, a long drive for weed that wasn't...

Nobody told me that getting sober wasn't the hard part. The hard part was realizing the version of myself I'd been dragging around for years — the beliefs, the patterns, the way I saw the world — most of it wasn't even mine. In this episode, I'm breaking down one of the most important phrases in my recovery:  Uncover, Discover, Discard.  This isn't a clinical framework — it's how I actually learne...

Jesse stayed sober after losing her 1-year-old son. A mother's story of recovery, grief, and faith. In December 2022, Jesse hit her rock bottom — a night of drinking and cocaine that ended in an ER waiting room, where she prayed for the first time and asked for help. Four months later, she found out she was pregnant. Her son Jacob — what she calls her miracle baby — became the reason she staye...

Self-forgiveness in addiction recovery is the work nobody markets — because nobody wants to buy it. In this solo episode, Anthony shares why shame is a stronger predictor of relapse than a deterrent, why guilt and shame are not the same emotion, and the 5-step practice he uses to forgive himself one day at a time. After 7.5 years sober, Anthony relapsed in 2024. He came back January 12, 2025. This...

Steven spent five months in a hotel room smoking crack, accepting he'd die there. Then his mother asked a judge if he had children — and two cops knocked. The story of one last day. Six and a half years ago, Steven was sitting in a hotel room he hadn't left in five months, smoking crack cocaine in the same clothes he'd been wearing since July. He'd accepted he was going to die there. Two weeks bef...

Most people don't relapse because they wanted to drink. They relapse because they were still chasing pleasure — just in a legal package. Anthony had 7.5 years of sober time before he picked up. In this episode, he breaks down the real reason long-term sobriety unravels: the war between pleasure and meaning, and why the recovery world is full of people white-knuckling a life they were never tra...

Is alcohol the problem, or is the person holding the glass? Anthony breaks down the science, the shame, and the honest answer most people in recovery won't say out loud. Full description: Is alcohol the problem — or is the person drinking it? It's one of the most argued questions in addiction recovery, and how you answer it changes everything about how you get sober and stay sober. In this solo ep...

Emily returns to Recovering Out Loud mid-relapse to announce she's ending her own sobriety podcast. This is by far The most raw and vunerable conversation we've had on chronic relapse, identity in recovery, and what happens when "sober Sally" disappears. Emily came on the first season of Recovering Out Loud almost two years sober, running her own recovery podcast  Talks on the Ro...

Struggling to move forward in recovery — even when you're "doing everything right"?  That might be resistance. And it probably doesn't look the way you think it does. In this episode of Recovering Out Loud, Anthony breaks down 5 forms of resistance that hide in plain sight in addiction recovery — the ones that feel like growth, look like progress, and get socially rewarded, but are quietly keeping...

People in recovery are being deliberately targeted by the peptide industry — and most of us don't even realize it. In this episode, Anthony breaks down how the influencer ecosystem profits from the exact vulnerability that early recovery creates: the desperate need to feel better, faster. Post-acute withdrawal syndrome is real, the brain genuinely takes time to heal, and predatory actors are f...

Everyone expects sobriety to reveal the real you — calmer, freer, finally yourself. What nobody warns you about is that the first thing sobriety does is introduce you to a version of yourself you don't recognize. And you might not like what you see. In this episode, Anthony gets into the personality change that happens when you get sober — not the inspirational version, the actual version. Why ear...

Predatory behavior in recovery spaces is real, and most people refuse to name it. In this solo episode, I share what 13th stepping is, why it puts newcomers — especially women — at serious risk, the manipulation tactics to watch for (love bombing, trauma bonding, isolation, fake "I can keep you sober" dependency), and what people with more time owe the people walking in scared. This isn&...